


Sanctuary

by zeldadestry



Category: American Beauty (1999)
Genre: F/M, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-21
Updated: 2008-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-24 01:22:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/257291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ricky rarely blinks. It is because he is always watching, watching so closely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sanctuary

**Author's Note:**

> written for Nai as an extra treat for the 2008 yuletide exchange  
> 

They step out of the Cobble Hill Cinema and stand for a moment on the sidewalk, holding hands. There's a kid learning to skateboard from his older brother and that captures Ricky's attention. Sometimes Ricky watches too long, not too long for him, too long for the people around him. "What the fuck are you looking at?" the teenager says to them when he realizes he's being observed.

"Don't talk to us like that," Jane snaps. "We're not bothering you, so chill."

"Whatever," the boy sneers.

When Jane turns back to Ricky, his gaze has shifted across the street. "Do you want tea?" he asks her.

"Sure." They cross to the coffee shop, sit down next to each other at a table in the corner. She orders for both of them. "Did you like the movie?" she asks, but she already knows he did. Sometimes she watches him instead of the screen. She likes to see his reactions. Sometimes she rests her head on his shoulder and watches the whole movie like that, tilted. Her neck might hurt afterward, but she loves to count on her fingers how many times during the film he turns his head and touches his lips to her hair.

"Yeah, I did."

"Poppy reminded me of you."

"Why?"

"Because she was always herself, with everyone. She didn't hide."

"Neither do you."

"You know that's not true."

"It is when you're with me." She accepts his kiss with guilt because he's wrong, and she proves it by not telling him so. As they wait for their tea to finish steeping, they watch two women cooing over their new baby. He rests his hand on her belly. "Someday."

  
Ricky takes a picture of her every single day and he puts them all over the walls of the empty room that looks out on their backyard. He sits there every day, just sits there. He would never call it meditation, he would never call it prayer, but he's the holiest person she knows.

"I'm sad," she confesses, and curls up on the floor beside him, rests her head on his thigh. This is maybe her favorite thing in the world, just to rest beside him as he sits. When he lays his hand upon her cheek, she receives it as a blessing. Ricky understands how much of life can not be expressed through language. He lets the world keep its silence.

  
After dinner, Angela reaches into her purse to look for her lipstick. "Almost forgot," she says, passing Jane an envelope. "That's for you."

Jane opens it, finds a photograph. Angela has both her arms around Jane, she's clinging to her. "We look so young."

"Oh, god, don't say that. I can still pass for sixteen."

Ricky's there, too, gently leaning against Jane, resting his head against hers. He's smiling like he always does when he's with her, like he holds the secret of the universe. She puts the picture back in the envelope for safekeeping, notices a newspaper clipping. "What's this?"

"Review of your boyfriend."

"What does it say?"

"That he's an enfant terrible."

"What?"

"He's brilliant, but he needs to do a better job editing his films."

"He doesn't edit. That's the point. It's all exactly as he saw it."

When she returns home he is in front of the computer screen, watching the footage he shot today. When he hears her walk into the room he pauses the playback, swivels in the chair to face her and opens his arms. She runs to him, sits in his lap and hides her face against the side of his throat. "Hi," she murmurs.

"Hi," he echoes back.

"I brought you soup and a sandwich. Are you hungry?" Sometimes he forgets to eat if she doesn't remind him.

"Later."

"Angela said you got a stellar review in the New York Times."

"Stellar. I like that word. Like a star."

"She gave me a copy, if you want to read it."

"Did you read it?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"What do you mean, why?"

"You're closer to me than anyone in this world. Why would you need to read what someone else says?"

"I was just curious. Aren't you curious at all?"

"No."

"If people were writing about me, I'd have to read it. I'd be so scared they were saying something mean."

"They can say whatever they want. It means nothing to me."

He was really sick, once, burning up with fever, but he wouldn't go to the doctor. Every time she asked him if he needed anything, his answer was always the same: just you. Sometimes she wishes he wouldn't say things like that. She loves him more than anyone, but he's not everything to her. He is the most important part of her life, but not the only. Sometimes when she's reading, or washing the dishes, or combing her hair after she gets out of the shower, she catches him staring at her and is unnerved for a moment by the feeling that he is always with her, that he would consume her if he could, make them into one being.

  
In the years they've lived together, Ricky's only seen her mother once. Her mom had been in Manhattan for a real estate workshop and they'd met for dinner. When Jane ordered dessert her mom said, "Honestly, Janie, show a little self-control. You're getting fat."

Ricky's fist hit the table. "Don't talk to her like that." He never raised his voice, but it was still a threat. "You don't own her." Jane was shaking and when he put his hand to her back, she couldn't help jerking away. "I'm sorry," he said to her. "I'll see you at home."

"Neither do you!" her mother screeched after him. "He's crazy, Jane, just like his father. Do you know how much I worry about you? You're all I've got and if something happens to you, if he ever hurts you, I'll kill him with my own hands. Do you hear me? I'll kill him. You tell him that."

He still scares her sometimes. He never means to, of course, but sometimes he does. She knows Ricky wouldn't lift a finger to protect himself, yet she feels he would do anything to protect her, anything, and she doesn't know if she can bear that responsibility. "He would never hurt me mom, I promise. I promise."

  
Sometimes she can't help but wonder what it would be like if they'd never met. Would they both still have their fathers? She's been thinking about her dad a lot lately. Soon it will be five years since he died. "I miss my dad," she tells Ricky one morning and he looks her straight in the eye and nods but says nothing. "The last thing he ever said to me was that he hoped I didn't turn into a bitch like my mom."

"You know he didn't mean that. He loved you. He just lost his temper. He was thinking of you when he died, of your mom, your family. He was happy."

"You can't know that."

"I can. I saw his face, remember, when I bent over and closed his eyes? I saw his smile."

"You remind me of a psychopomp."

"What's that?"

"Like Hermes or Anubis. They guide souls to the realm of the dead." They've never talked about his father and she wonders if they should. Her mother was incensed that he didn't receive the death penalty, but Jane doesn't want revenge. "Do you miss your dad?"

"He's here, isn't he? He's here inside me, the good parts of him. How could I miss him?"

"But would you like to go see him?" He takes the train to visit his mom every month, without fail.

"Maybe. Someday. Not today."

She can tell from his careful attention to her that he's waiting, waiting for her to reply, waiting to see an expression glide across her face, waiting for some insight into what she's feeling. She bows her head so her hair covers her. "I'm gonna take a shower," she says, and leaves their bed.

Under the water, Jane remembers how her mom refused to let Ricky sit with them at the funeral. She told Ricky she didn't care what her mother wanted, she'd be sitting with him. "You're my family," she told him, convinced that the only safe place in the world was with him.

"Go with your mom," he said. "She needs you right now. Don't be scared. I'll be waiting for you."

"I love you so much," she whispered against his chest. "Do you know how much?"

She remembers his hands at the back of her head. "Yeah," he said, "I do."

For so long he's protected her and taken care of her and sometimes she just wishes she could offer him the same.

She towels off, walks back into their bedroom without getting dressed. He's curled on his side but when she lifts up the covers and gets back in bed he turns into her, immediately wraps his arms around her. "I'll go with you," she says, "if you want," thinking about any eventual visits to his dad.

"Go with me where?"

She can feel his heart beat and the heat of his body, hear how their breathing synchronizes, slow, deep, like peace is all they have known and know and will ever know. She gives him something, she doesn't know what it is, but she gives him as much as he gives her. They give to each other, take from each other, and together they go on, together they live. "Anywhere," she swears.


End file.
